Favorite Files

No favorite files added yet

Recent Posts

1. Comment - Who needs hackers? Palin e-mail hack reveals obvious vulnerability

   (Sep 19, 2008 - 3:15 PM)

   Several obvious security issues have occurred to me, a private citizen, over the years. Amazingly supposedly computer literate people often overlook them so I think we should cut Governor Palin some slack. After all, breaking into her account isn't really any different morally than sneaking into her campaign headquarters and snooping a filing cabinet full of paper - I guess we can call this Computergate.
   
   Generally I have been concerned to select questions that there is some hope almost nobody else knows or can guess the answer to, and specifically to use questions that are not a matter of public record. For example, any idiot can go to an online geneaology and have a good chance of finding any target's mother's maiden name.
   
   I have also been reasonably concerned that ALL the online systems want basically the same information. I try hard NOT to give it to them since if ONE of them has s ecurity breach, then ALL the services I use can be hacked. This does require a system for picking passwords that I can remember - especially since I don't ever let the browser keep them for me for important sites because sooner or later some enterprising hacker is going to figure out how to suck all those cookies off my computer.
   
   Realistically speaking, everyone uses all email accounts for everything. Part of what we need is for hacking to be seen as immoral, and the police to really do something about it. In this case, to subpoena the AP and put the relevant people there in jail until they provide the information.